Two thousand and forty-eight searches. Authorities say that’s not an investigation. That’s a months-long pattern of surveillance app targeting the mother of an officer’s child — conducted through a system designed to catch criminals, logged under false pretenses, and sustained across state lines.
Officer Asad Zahir of the Shively Police Department now faces criminal charges after authorities say he used the department’s Flock Safety license plate reader system to track his ex-girlfriend’s vehicles across Kentucky and Indiana between January and May. What’s remarkable isn’t just the alleged conduct — it’s that an AI auditing tool flagged the abuse on a Monday, and Zahir was arrested by Tuesday. What’s troubling is that it ran for five months before anyone looked.
What the Records Show
The numbers, pulled from court records and arrest citations, don’t leave much room for interpretation.
According to court records and CNN reporting, Zahir allegedly:
- Conducted 2,048 Flock searches targeting two vehicles registered to the mother of his child
- Logged every search under “drug or narcotics investigation” — for a woman with no active investigation and no documented connection to drug offenses
- Ran 241 of those searches between April 17 and May 6, while a protective order against him was active
- Was charged with five counts of official misconduct and five counts of unlawful computer access under Kentucky law, then suspended without pay
When the Tool Catches Itself
Flock’s AI auditing layer flagged the anomaly Monday — and Zahir was in custody by Tuesday.
Flock Safety’s ALPR system consists of cameras mounted on public roads that automatically capture license plates, vehicle colors, and other characteristics, feeding that data into a searchable database police departments access under contract. The company recently added an AI auditing layer designed to detect abnormal query patterns — much like how secretly tracking users can go undetected without such mechanisms. In this case, it worked — eventually.
“The Flock camera works,” Shively Police Chief Andre Bottoms told reporters. “When it’s used properly it works.”
Bottoms called the arrest a “gut punch” and promised protocol reviews covering access rules, search justifications, and supervisory oversight. The system has genuine documented wins: stolen vehicles recovered, a missing child found, homicide cases advanced. Defending the tool and reckoning with its failure, though, aren’t mutually exclusive.
The Pattern That Won’t Stay Quiet
One bad actor is a scandal — but researchers say the documented cases are only the beginning.
The Institute for Justice, which tracks ALPR misuse cases and has filed Fourth Amendment challenges against Flock, documents roughly 30 cases of officers using Flock specifically to stalk romantic interests. Broader ALPR misuse tallies exceed 50 incidents involving officers surveilling women. Researchers describe these figures as “only the tip of the iceberg” — because most cases surface when victims notice they’re being followed, not when internal audits flag them.
That’s the uncomfortable math beneath the Shively arrest. Tempe, Arizona has already canceled its Flock contract. Activists have vandalized cameras in protest — a dynamic explored in depth in San Jose’s Flock Problem. The civil liberties argument isn’t that the technology can’t catch criminals — it’s that mass, warrantless vehicle tracking builds infrastructure that bad actors inside the system can quietly weaponize, like issuing master keys and assuming no one makes copies.
Flock’s AI auditing is a real accountability mechanism. The Shively case is simultaneously its best argument and its worst advertisement — the system worked, but only after five months of unchecked access to one woman’s every move.
